UN urges Africa to develop regulations to spur e-commerce growth

Nairobi, July 24 (IANS) The United Nations has urged African states to develop regulations in order to spur e-commerce growth.

Mukhisa Kituyi, Secretary-General of UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), told journalists in Nairobi on Monday that the continent lags the rest of the world in the uptake of digital trade due to lack of a conducive ecosystem, Xinhua reported.

“Africa needs to develop laws to enhance on integrity of procurement on electronic platforms so that consumer can trust e-commerce platforms,” Kituyi said during the African Union e-commerce conference in Nairobi.

The three-day event aims to provide a platform to enhance understanding of the current state of e-commerce in Africa, the challenges and opportunities, build on the experience of actors on the ground as well as other regions of the world, and to discuss key elements of a roadmap for the development of a African protocol on intellectual rights to facilitate emergency of African players.

Kituyi said that Kenya, South Africa and Nigeria lead the continent in the performance of e-commerce as they have all recorded approximately 6 percent of overall trade as being conducted in digital platforms as at the end of 2017.

He said that Kenya has one of the most advanced mobile money payments systems in the world with about 85 per cent of adults having a mobile bank accounts.

“However, high financial inclusion is not a sufficient condition to catalyze e-commerce especially in the rural areas that lack physical infrastructure to provide efficient delivery systems,” said Kituyi.

Kiyuti who is also a former Kenyan trade minister decried the lack of domestic e-commerce platforms in the continent.

He said that local e-commerce platforms are likely to show more fidelity to local producers and boost domestic productivity as opposed to foreign players that have a bias towards selling more international goods locally.